Judge Crushes Wisconsin Dems’ “John Doe” Investigations

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker crushed Democrats in that very liberal state. They're an angry and unforgiving bunch, those Wisconsin Democrats, and in typical Democrat style there's nothing they won't do in trying to take down a political enemy.

In some of the most disgusting abuses of power you haven't heard of, several of that state's disrict attorneys have resorted to "John Doe" investigations of conservative activists. Lois Lerner would no doubt approve, but no citizen should.

Under these "investigations," these petty tyrants raided the homes and stole the property of conservative activists, especially a gentleman named R.J. Johnson, affiliated with the Wisconsin Club for Growth, as part of a massive fishing expedition trying to find anything that they could use to tarnish Gov. Walker.

Once the Democrats couldn't prove illegal coordination between activists and the Walker re-election campaign, they then turned to trying to criminalize the conservatives' participation in the political process.

The true goal of the Democrats -- and they've been very effective for the last two years -- is scaring potential donors away from some of Wisconsin's most effective conservative political activist groups since those running the groups had to disclose that they were the possible subject of a criminal investigation.

In a Tuesday ruling, federal judge Rudolph Randa crushed the Democratic scoundrels, offering reason after reason after reason why every argument made by the prosecutors was clearly, horribly wrong, and how their actions had dramatically harmed the victims and unjustifiably infringed their First Amendment rights.

The judge said that the district attorneys must stop these investigations and return all property taken from the victims of this abuse of power. Actually, I'll just quote from the end of the decision. It's fairly dramatic for this sort of document. (Note: The "Defendants" are the district attorneys, the plaintiffs are the conservative activists.)

The Defendants must cease all activities related to the investigation, return all property seized in the investigation from any individual or organization, and permanently destroy all copies of information and other materials obtained through the investigation. Plaintiffs and others are hereby relieved of any and every duty under Wisconsin law to cooperate further with Defendants‘ investig ation. Any attempt to obtain compliance by any Defendant or John Doe Judge Gregory Peterson is grounds for a contempt finding by this Court.

Not surprisingly, the angry, power-mad tyrants will almost certainly be appealing to a Circuit Court of Appeals. In the meantime, I hope and trust that the judge will not put a stay on his injunction during the appeal. If he believes that the district attorneys are truly attacking First Amendment rights and doing irreparable harm thereby, he should certainly refuse to give them an inch of leeway.

It's also worth mentioning that part of what the judge relied on for his decision was the recent McCutcheon decision for which I praised Chief Justice John Roberts -- and was pilloried by many readers of these pages. This demonstrates the true importance of good Supreme Court precedent, even from a justice who made a big mistake.

(More reporting on this at the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel web site here.)

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